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Sustainable forest management is driving the development of forest decision support systems (DSSs) to include models and methods concerned with climate change, biodiversity and various ecosystem services (ESs). The future development of forest landscapes is very much dependent on how forest owners act and what goes on in the wider world, thus models are needed that incorporate these aspects. The objective of this study is to assess how nine European state-of-the-art forest DSSs cope with these issues. The assessment focuses on the ability of these DSSs to generate landscape level scenarios to explore the output of current and alternative forest management models (FMMs) in terms of a range of ESs and the robustness of these FMMs in the face of increased risks and uncertainty. Results show that all DSSs assessed in this study can be used to quantify the impacts of both stand and landscape-level FMMs on the provision of a range of ESs over a typical planning horizon. DSSs can be used to assess how timber price trends may impact that provision over time. The inclusion of forest owner behavior as reflected by the adoption of specific FMMs seems to be also in the reach of all DSSs. Nevertheless, some DSSs need more data and development of models to estimate the impacts of climate change on biomass production and other ESs. Spatial analysis functionality need to be further developed for a more accurate assessment of the landscape level output of ESs from both current and alternative FMMs.

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Arts. 2015. Mapping future changes in livelihood security and environmental sustainability based on perceptions of small farmers in the Brazilian Amazon. ABSTRACT. Deforestation is a widely recognized problem in the Brazilian Amazon. Small farmers play a key role in this process in that they earn their livelihood by ranching and farming. Many studies have addressed the link between deforestation and livelihood strategies adopted by small farmers. Most have focused on advanced monitoring systems, simulation models, and GIS approaches to analyze the interaction of both dimensions, i.e., livelihoods and forest cover change. Although the current toolbox of methods has proved successful in increasing our understanding of these interactions, the models and approaches employed do not consider small farmers' perspectives. On the assumption that local small farmers are agents of land-cover change, understanding how they perceive their own situation is essential to elucidate their actions. Our objective is to explore future changes in livelihood security and environmental sustainability as envisaged by local small farmers in the Brazilian Amazon. Previous livelihood cluster analysis of small farmers located in southeast Pará was integrated with fuzzy cognitive mapping to determine present perceptions and to explore future changes, using global scenarios downscaled to the local situation. Overall, system description differs only on details; all results indicate a strong trade-off between livelihood security and environmental sustainability in all livelihood systems, as identified by the small farmers. However, fundamentally different outcomes are obtained from the future analysis, depending on the livelihood strategy cluster. Achieving win-win outcomes does not necessarily imply a positive scenario, especially if small farmers are dependent on income transfers from the government to provide their livelihood.